While, despite the plummeting meteor of global economic downturn and the
hovering specter of runaway global warming, North Americans were again
scurrying mindlessly in their Christmas shopping sprees, a secret
closed-door meeting by an International Whaling Commission (IWC) drafting
group comprising 6 nations (Australia, Japan, the United States, New
Zealand, Sweden and Brazil) was held in Cambridge, UK, whose resolution, if
passed in the IWC convention later in June this year, could reopen Japanese
commercial whaling in the western North Pacific - a huge backslide of human
civilization for the 21st Century..

In the starkest of terms, here is the deal: to allow Japan to hunt whales
in its coastal waters, with IWC's blessing, openly and commercially, in
exchange for its slowing or halting its "scientific research" whaling
"program" in the Antarctic..

Historically, Japan has practiced three types of whaling: pelagic whaling
(PW), large-type coastal whaling (LTCW) and small-type coastal whaling (STCW)..
While its PW has been moved south to the Antarctic and since the 1986
moratorium has hidden behind the hideous and intellectually insulting mask
of "scientific research" whaling, its LTCW has been halted, and its STCW has
been reduced to those species not covered by the IWC, including the Baird's
whale, the pilot whale, and porpoises and dolphins of various species
numbering some 22,000 per year.. Japanese coastal whaling of those species
not regulated by the IWC is regulated by Japan itself, and is open between
May and November.. If the secret deal goes ahead, Japan will be able to add
all the IWC regulated species - the Minke whale, the Sei whale, the Fin
whale, the Humpback whale and the Sperm whale, among others - to the
carnage. Western North Pacific waters will be red with whale blood..

And then there is the wild card of "aboriginal traditional cultural
whaling". Over the last two decades Japan has been recruiting North American
native tribes to reopen their own "cultural whaling" - using modern
motorized watercraft and high powered firearms mind you - including the
Makah tribe of Washington state regarding the Grey whale, and the Alaskan
Eskimos who kill upwards of 40 Bowhead whales a year, thus justifying a
"cultural whaling" of Japan's own..

Some argue that Japanese coastal whaling should not be used as a
bargaining chip to end Japanese Antarctic "research" whaling, and this does
make sense.. But I say that it makes more sense to say that ending
"research" whaling in the Antarctic should not be used as a justification
for reopening Japanese commerical whaling in the North Pacific, since to me
Japanese "research whaling" - with zero peer-reviewed research report and
tons of whale meat in supermarkets - has no scientific legitimacy to begin
with, and is illegal from a higher-law point of view..

As far as I'm concerned, whaling should be terminated totally, entirely,
completely and immediately, with no exception and zero tolerance.. The right
of whales and dolphins to live in peace supersedes any human-based reason,
period.